Mercury is a ubiquitous environmental pollutant of dominantly anthropogenic origin. A critical concern for human health is the introduction of mercury to the food chain; therefore, monitoring of mercury levels in agricultural soil is essential. Unfortunately, the total mercury content is not sufficiently informative as mercury can be present in different forms with variable bioavailability. Since 1990, the use of bioreporters has been investigated for assessment of the bioavailability of pollutants; however, real contaminated soils have rarely been used in these studies. In this work, a bioassay with whole-cell bacterial bioreporter Escherichia coli ARL1 was used for estimation of bioavailable concentration of mercury in 11 soil samples. The bioreporter emits bioluminescence in the presence of Hg(II). Four different pretreatments of soil samples prior to the bioassay were tested. Among them, laccase mediated extraction was found to be the most suitable over water extraction, alkaline extraction, and direct use of water-soil suspensions. Nevertheless, effect of the matrix on bioreporter signal was found to be severe and not possible to be completely eliminated by the method of standard addition. In order to elucidate the matrix role, influences of humic acid and selected metal ions present in soil on the bioreporter signal were tested separately in laboratory solutions. Humic acids were found to have a positive effect on the bioreporter growth, but a negative effect on the measured bioluminescence, likely due to shading and Hg binding resulting in decreased bioavailability. Each of the tested metal ions solutions affected the bioluminescence signal differently; cobalt (II) positively, iron (III) negatively, and the effects of iron (II) and nickel (II) were dependent on their concentrations. In conclusion, the information on bioavailable mercury estimated by bioreporter E. coli ARL1 is valuable, but the results must be interpreted with caution. The route to functional bioavailability bioassay remains long.
Keywords: Escherichia coli ARL1; bioluminescent bioreporter; mercury detection; pollution bioavailability; whole-cell biosensor.